Shane O’Neill discovers ODBC scalar functions:
Can you imagine my shock when I came across a piece of code that not only was not for finding and replacing but even though I did not think it would compile, it did!
If you can imagine my shock, then you’re going to need to increase it more when I tell you that there are a whole family of the same functions!
Here is the code that threw me for a loop the first time I saw it.
SELECT {d '1970-01-01'};
I wasn’t familiar with this syntax either, but if you work heavily with multiple data sources, it can be quite useful—for example, Teradata and DB/2 support them, as well as Shane’s examples of SQL Server and Oracle.